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News from the Network

In this paper we compare several types of economic dependency ratios for a selection of European countries. These dependency ratios take into account not only the demographic structure of the population, but also the differences in age-specific economic behaviour such as labour market activity, income and consumption as well as age-specific public transfers. [...]

Who are the refugees who arrived in Europe in the summer and fall of 2015? What are their motivations, their intentions, their skills, their attitudes? A new study in PLOS ONE by researchers from the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital now sheds light on these important questions. Lead researcher Isabella Buber-Ennser and colleagues conducted a survey (Displaced Persons in Austria Survey DiPAS) and gathered information on 972 individuals from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan who arrived in Austria in 2015. [...]

Wave 6 data released!
SHARE is very happy to announce the release of Wave 6 data. Wave 6 not only includes Croatia as a new country but also a longitudinal version of the social network module which tracks changes in respondents' social networks over time. In addition, the new release 6.0.0 provides an update of all previous waves of SHARE.
Download the data: You can register as a user and download the data here. [...]

A growing body of evidence suggests that reproductive history influences post-reproductive mortality. A potential explanation for this association is confounding by socioeconomic status in the family of origin, as socioeconomic status is related to both fertility behaviours and to long-term health. Kieron Barclay, Katherine Keenan, Emily Grundy, Martin Kolk and Mikko Myrskylä examine the relationship between age at first birth, completed parity, and post-reproductive mortality and address the potential confounding role of family of origin. [...]

In the newly published book Öffentliche Gesellschaftswissen (Public Social Science) by Stefan Selke and Annette Treibel, several members of the Population Europe Secretariat collaborated on a chapter to share the best-practice experiences of Population Europe as a demographic research network. The chapter explains how the network assists leading researchers and research institutions in Europe in connecting with political and societal decision-makers, as well as the general public. [...]

The trend of legal recognition for gay and lesbian couples is broadening. More and more rights are becoming available to same-sex partners – in more and more European countries. Leiden Law School and French Institute for Demographic Studies publish detailed database and comparative analysis.
Growing consensus
[...]

Refugees’ post-migration choices about where to call home have stumped many a policymaker. In 2015, it was refugees’ “irregular secondary movement” that rendered Europe’s Dublin system obsolete. Yet it is refugees’ voluntary relocation away from ethnic enclaves that signals successful integration. A closer look at a Swedish policy exposes motivations behind them and how even light interventions can affect outcomes. In 1985, refugee settlement was changed from open to assigned to promote integration by mitigating the growth of established ethnic enclaves. [...]

By examining social attitudes on same-sex adoption in 28 European countries, researchers Judit Takács, Ivett Szalma and Tamás Bartus highlighted individual and country-level factors that can determine the level of social acceptance or rejection of this specific kind of adoption. Their article contributes to the literature on social acceptance of lesbian women, gay men, and their adoption practices in Europe and directs attention to several previously under-researched aspects of social attitudes on same-sex parenting rights.
[...]

Greek life expectancy is on the rise. Between 2004 and 2013, life expectancy at birth rose more than two full years from 79.3 to 81.4, keeping Greece above the EU average (up 2.2 years to 80.6) and on par with some richer countries like Germany (up 1.6 years to 80.9). Within the country, the change has not been driven by rich regions only: Epirus (Ipeiros), the country’s poorest by GDP per capita (2011), saw a rise in life expectancy similar to that of Athens (Attiki). [...]